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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25331791">always keep choosing you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachyteague/pseuds/peachyteague'>peachyteague</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>St. Elmo's Fire (1985)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Anonymous Love Letters, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:48:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,820</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25331791</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachyteague/pseuds/peachyteague</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>one shot - so give me something to believe. ‘cause I am living just to breathe. and I need something more to keep on breathing for</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>kevin dolenz/reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>always keep choosing you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i....i got nothing for you man</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p></p>
  <div class="">
    <p>Kevin is thankful for the letters. Something to pull his mind in another direction when everything becomes too much. Each beautiful page is different. Everyone, it’s own design, own hand, as is to show their very meaning before he could even begin to read them. Kevin envies this of you, how you can demand attention with old notes. And he’d never even seen your face. It makes him think of this idea of the “true writer” he’s created in his mind. He had so many questions to ask you. He’s never gotten the chance. You won’t <em>give </em>him the chance. Or give yourself the chance. He still isn’t quite sure.</p>
  </div>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Briefly, he had imagined perhaps it had always been Leslie. Or maybe it had simply been easier to let his mind wander. Trick himself into thinking <em>maybe just maybe</em>. But you aren’t. You’re him and she just couldn’t be you. He’s gotten very good at not remembering all that when he realized everything his waking love had been feeling must be what he currently found his heart entangled in. He doesn’t think about that. Instead, he lights a cigarette and stares at the unopened envelope.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s the center of his universe for the night. There’s no return address, there never has been before, and therein lies the confusion. This wasn’t the college dorms where you could simply ask it placed in his box or delivered to his dorm. His name on the pale blue envelope tucked into the crack of his door can only mean one thing. You had been there. The curling loops and sharp angles of his name are pristine. As if every bit of his name was a precious thing to be cherished.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Had you knocked? Or were you too scared? For a moment, had there only been a few footsteps to answer a question he’d been asking for far too long. With a long gulp the rest of his drink is gone, a pleasant burn in the throat. Grounding and almost soothing while managing to stoke his curiosity. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>His fingers are gentle. Careful not to tear the clearly expensive envelope or the written treasure inside. The fold pages appear, beautiful as always. Purple and almost gauzy and adorned with those same perfect letters. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He loves your handwriting. How it looks the same but somehow always different. So much emotion in every stroke. He’s so close to being able to hear your voice. But never quite makes it. Kevin stubs out his cigarette, a little too hard and the ashtray clatters. He’s strung tighter than he likes and opts to take another desperate gulp. This time from the bottle</p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>It’s been a while.</p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>He’s desperate once he sees the words and it sinks in. It truly has been a while. The last letter in his collection arriving the night before graduation.</p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>I was going to do it. Really I was. I saw you there and I realized that there were no longer any real consequences. I could take that pain, that hurt. Eventually, everything is lost to the winds of time. Wouldn’t the violent removal of you from my heart heal just the same as any other wound?</p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>Had your hands shook? His breath chokes, just wondering. What would it have been like? It had been easy for him to let you fall somewhere in the back of his mind. Hidden like cobwebs. But to truly lose you? It had never occurred to him, maybe if only because he never truly had you. Bit you...</p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>I saw you there. Flood gates up, ready for whatever the bitter battle of romance threw at me. I was so ready. Even with my heart in my throat not knowing if I’d manage even a whisper around the lump and knowing I’d have to force it all the same. A hurricane of what if’s destroying my mind as I stepped closer and closer. What would you say? I swore I had prepared something that sounded as close to waxing poetic as I dared. I remembered absolutely none of it. Would I just lose all self-control? Ignore words for the simple and clear act of pressing my lips to you. Would you want me?</p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>There’s a laugh. It takes a little too long for him to realize it’s his own. What would he have done then? With both of you truly in his life? He can’t help another laugh because there is a twisted irony in that.</p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>I still regret not having just chosen that option. It’s all I ever wanted after all. To be the center of your world for just a few perfect seconds. Drink up what little of you I could for cold, lonely nights. Just as I always have. I was so close. I will always regret not reaching out and touching you. Just the barest bit. A brush of fingertips. It’s all I had to do and I should’ve. God! I really should have Kevin. Do you think it would all have been different? What would you have done? If you had felt my fingers against yours would you have known? Something indescribable passed from me to you in that brief moment of flesh against flesh. Would my name instantly steal your mind?</p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>He needed a cigarette. That was the only thing he knew for sure right now. So he rewarded himself with one, feeling quite confident he’d more than earned it. Using it to calm his nerves and take deep, nicotine heavy breaths.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He’s lost in a sea of too many feelings. Lost. Guilt. Anger. Sadness. And if he were being a hundred percent honest, just a little bit aroused. Every part of him says he would have known. He would kiss you, he just knows it. Losing all of himself in one reckless, emotionally charged, <em>beautiful </em>moment. Like with Leslie. It’s starting to frustrate him how much easier it is to see this all of the perspective of the two most important women in his life.</p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>But there she was- is? Regardless, we weren’t ready. It wasn’t our time. It hurt to realize. Every part of me shattering into more pieces than I really knew what to do with. You weren’t ready. I just had to hope that one day you would be. Hope that whatever part of me that could feel what you feel, whatever part of the cosmos that connected us, would tell me when you were. I couldn’t cry about it. I still had you. Even if you couldn’t read the letters I wrote, I still wrote them, for the day that you could. Everything I felt, thought, all the things I knew you weren’t ready for. That the universe had decided <em>we </em>just couldn’t have yet. I need you to know this. You have to know that I mean this with every fiber of my being.</p>
</blockquote><blockquote class="">
  <p>
    <em>I never forgot you.</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>“Me neither,” he mumbles into the bottle pressed against his lips, “But you were right. You’re always right,” letting out a long heavy sigh.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Were they now? Things were different. Oh so different. If ever they were ready, wouldn’t it be now? It was the perfect moment. Every part of him was open and gaping for the world to see. Couldn’t something good and uncomplicated happen? Couldn’t he just have you? Recklessly lose himself in you like he should’ve been doing this whole time.</p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>I don’t think you forgot me. I could just feel it. And then I saw you. I knew it, I just knew it. Drunk. Lonely. I knew what she’d done. I’d imagined it far too many times. If only because it’s what you could to me. Broken, mangled, <em>lost</em>. It’s easier when it’s unrequited. When they don’t know. You can pretend they love you, imagine all the beautiful ways you’ll confess it to each other. Dream a future. As long as it’s never a part of reality. Rejection is heavier than the world on anyone’s shoulders and far less forgiving.</p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>He’s so angry. Though he doesn't know if it’s more at you than himself. How had he not known you were there? Why couldn’t you just come up to him? He couldn’t fault you for being a coward, after all, he’d been that way himself. You were him after all. How long had he pined? How many chances had he missed to just be honest? </p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>You’d had your moment with her. Your time. It was like this pain you were carrying around sucked the life from the whole bar. I’m sure that was supposed to be the moment. Instead, again, I was a coward. Meek and self-conscious. A little drunk. And, quite suddenly, incredibly sad. How selfish is that? I smoked cigarette after cigarette thinking of all the things I should’ve said to you. What if that had been our moment? Sad and drunk, falling into a tangle of sweaty limbs and tear-streaked cheeks? Not picturesque but it would’ve been us.</p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>He hates this. You’re supposed to be uncomplicated. Words on a page. A thought. <em>A dream</em>. Just like Leslie had been. How had everything become so twisted in so few days? He almost wishes he’d taken your way, hiding from the moment instead of seizing it. He knows how it feels. He can’t blame you. Kevin loves you too much. It’s so strange to love you. A ghost. That’s what you are after all, seemingly doomed to see and love him while he never saw you there.</p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>I hadn’t meant to follow you. It honestly surprised me that your front door was not just on the way to my own but close. I thought any moment you’d turned down another street, lost to me forever. You didn’t though. Your hands, writer’s hands, fumbled with keys and you just walked inside. Right there, just a few blocks away. All this time. Not more than ten minutes from my own stoop. Where I smoke and drink and write those damnable letters I thought you’d never see. How many times had you walked by and I was the one not paying attention. Too distracted by you to actually see you. How was I to know I was supposed to be looking?</p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>There’s a knock on his door. Not one he’s ever heard before. As if the person themself wished they weren’t there.</p>
</div><blockquote class="">
  <p>That’s how you must feel, right? Desperate to find something with no idea where it is. How are you meant to find it? It was unfair for me to expect that of you. No, Kevin, this time it has to be me. You have done your share of being brave and naked in all the hardest ways. My turn...</p>
</blockquote><div class="">
  <p>There is nothing left but another soft knock. It can only be you. There’s no other option or explanation. The choice is his now. Does he open that door? Or does he wait? Just like he always has.</p>
</div>
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